Just as THOMAS CARLYLE, out of his superior knowledge of the proletariat, informed us that, if you pricked it, it would bleed, so Mr. RUDOLF BESIER, fortified by intimacy with Court life, confides to us on the programme (in quotation) that Kings and Queens "have five fingers on each hand and take their meals regularly." But unless we are to get a little sacrilegious fun (such as Captain MARSHALL gave us) out of the contrast between the human nature of Royalties and the formalities which govern them as by divine right, there is not much object in raising a vulgar domestic scandal to the dignity of Court circles. True, the higher claims of kingship did enter into the question in the case of _Richard VIII._, whose heart was badly torn between his duty to his people and his passion for his wife; but for the rest, and apart from the mere properties (human or inanimate) of a royal palace, we might have been concerned with an ordinary middle-class interior complicated by a residential mother-in-law. [Illustration: NOBLESSE OBLIGE. _King Richard VIII._ (Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER), referring to his mother, _Queen Elizabeth_ (Miss FRANCES IVOR). "KEEP HER AWAY FROM ME, OR I SHALL KILL HER!" _Emperor Frederick IV._ (SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER). "TUT, TUT! SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. WE CAN'T PERMIT MATRICIDE AT THE ST. JAMES'S THEATRE."] The causes of the misunderstanding (partially shared by myself) between the King and his Consort were some four or five. There was the Dowager Queen--a constant obsession--who stood for the extreme of propriety. She ought, of course, to have had a palace of her own. There was the young King, upon whom she rigorously imposed her own standards of living. There was the young Queen with a harmless taste for the natural gaiety of youth. Not designed by nature for the wearing of the purple, she had been taken from a nice country home, where there were birds and flowers and mountains. She kept saying to herself:-- "Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam, Be they never so regal, I'd rather go home." But, since she couldn't do that, she clamoured for pretty frocks, and for the right to choose her own friends. Among these was an American Marquise of so doubtful a record that her name had to be deleted from the list of guests commanded to the State Ball. I was greatly disappointed not to meet her. Then there was a royal female Infant (deceased), who should of course have been a boy. Her contribution to the general discomfort, though pressed upon us with fearless reiteration, was always outside the grasp of my intelligence. Neither of her parents seemed to share my hope that they might possibly live to beget other offspring, including even a male child.